City of Bellevue selected for White House Smart Cities program to develop innovative digital service-management platform with CH2M

DENVER, Nov. 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The City of Bellevue, Wash. and CH2M, along with Kansas City, Mo., are innovating together to develop a digital platform and dashboard to better manage citywide services. Eventually, the city dashboard will become available to all cities, allowing them to replicate the online tool for improved service delivery.

It's all part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Global City Teams Challenge that the White House announced during Smart Cities Week in September. Bellevue was selected as a lead city to work with NIST and its collaborators to develop "blueprints" for shared solutions that will be implemented in multiple cities and communities. On October 25-26, NIST and US Ignite hosted the Global City Teams Challenge 2016 SuperCluster Kickoff Event in Washington, D.C. in which multi-team "superclusters" gathered to begin taking on grand challenges too big for any single city team to tackle.

"We are thrilled to be selected as one of the lead cities and to collaborate with other communities and technology partners to develop a pilot smart city dashboard," said Chelo Picardal, Bellevue's chief technology officer. "Through this program, we'll be able to address our need for a citywide digital platform in a way that other cities can benefit from as well."

The City of Bellevue is committed to becoming a leader in Smart City design and implementation in the U.S. through better connectivity of its systems, departments, residents and visitors. Bellevue is working closely with CH2M on the Global Cities Team Challenge partnership to develop and pilot the technologies needed to make better use of its existing data, gather new data and effectively share the data to enhance the daily activities of City of Bellevue employees, residents, businesses and visitors.

For Smart City Bellevue, multiple departments are working together to achieve improved outcomes through the analysis of real-time data that will be shared among departments and communicated to various stakeholders. This Smart City approach will provide the city with greater effectiveness and efficiencies in operating individual departments and communicating across departments. Through the smart utilization of data along with the deployment of a resident portal, Bellevue can leverage the value of all smart systems to the community.

"Often cities install smart lighting, parking, water, and other systems in a vacuum that are costly to integrate together later on," said Ken Thompson, CH2M's deputy director of Intelligent Water Solutions. "Together, we're creating a citywide platform with a vision for the future that breaks down silos, improves efficiencies, and provides substantial benefits for residents," Thompson said. 

Based on the city's strong Smart City program and goal to develop an integrated and interoperable framework to meet community goals, Bellevue received one of four Replicable Smart City Technologies grants from NIST that enables 11 cities and communities to work together on innovative smart city solutions. NIST is providing strong leadership at the federal level by working across different agencies to enhance national support for smart cities and creating an international coalition to develop an Internet of Things-Enabled Smart City Framework. By studying real-world smart city applications and architectures, this coalition will identify pivotal points of interoperability where emerging alignment on standards can enable diverse, yet interoperable smart city solutions.

"We are honored to partner with NIST, our City of Bellevue client and other cities in creating efficient, accessible communities that will provide long-term benefits for citizens and other stakeholders for Bellevue and potentially other cities around the world," said Joseph Danko, global managing director for CH2M's Urban Environments & Sports group and leader of the company's Great City Solutions program.

Other lead cities in the White House Smart Cities program include Atlanta, Ga.; Columbus, Ohio; Kansas City, Kan. (and Kansas City, Mo.), Newport News, Va.; and Portland, Ore.

About CH2M
CH2M leads the professional services industry delivering sustainable solutions benefiting societal, environmental and economic outcomes with the development of infrastructure and industry. In this way, CH2Mers make a positive difference providing consulting, design, engineering and management services for clients in water; environment and nuclear; transportation; energy and industrial markets, from iconic infrastructure to global programs like the Olympic Games. Ranked among the World's Most Ethical Companies and top firms in environmental consulting and program management, CH2M in 2016 became the first professional services firm honored with the World Environment Center Gold Medal Award for efforts advancing sustainable development. Connect with CH2M at www.ch2m.com; LinkedIn; Twitter; and Facebook.

About City of Bellevue
Known as a "City in a Park" with nearly 100 parks and a vast network of trails and greenbelts, Bellevue is the fifth largest city in Washington state. The Eastside city spans 33.5 square miles, from Lake Washington to Lake Sammamish. As part of the Innovation Triangle, Bellevue is the high-tech and retail center with a downtown skyline of gleaming high-rises, a diverse population of approximately 140,000 and schools that are consistently rated among the best in the country. To learn more about why Bellevue is the city where you want to be, visit www.bellevuewa.gov.

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